For those of you who don't
know who Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel is, let
me take a moment to tell you. Wendel is one of the best First person
shooter game players in the world who has proven himself in many
tournaments. Wendel started playing competitively at the young age of
13, and now at the age of 23 he has won the most national and
internationally ranked tournaments in the world.
He
is what I think of as the "gaming ambassador" or a person that shows the
world what gaming is all about. It is not just bleeps on the screen but
an actual lifestyle, just like any other sport. Wendel's natural ability
allows him to compete in a multitude of different games and come out on
top. As stated in one of his interviews "it's all about numbers"
and he has a knack for figuring out the right strategies to keep his
game sharp.

At CES this year, Johnathan and his
sponsors ABIT Creative Labs & Zalman, came out to challenge anyone that
thinks they have the skill to beat John at a limited time death match.
If you win you get paid 5000.00 USD! If you lose, you still walk
away with some nice consolation prizes. Most of the competitors
seemed happy just to play against such a great player that they walked
away smiling, even after getting pretty much destroyed. Also featured at
this booth, the "Fatal1ty" team spent some
time talking about very important PC related information like over
clocking performance enhancement and of course, the products he
endorses. The main reason for this booth in my mind was to let people
know just what Fatal1ty is all about.
Wendel, with his new found fame, has put together a bunch of equipment
and even played a role in the design to create the perfect FPS gaming
system. This product is nicknamed "THE FATBOX™".
This system is based off of
ABIT's P4 PCI-e Prescott series mother boards, the AN8 & aa8, with some
major improvements. They added dual LAN for added bandwidth, a RAM &
north bridge cooling system that is just plain cool. Even the
layout of the board looks like it was meant to "scream." For
sound, Johnathan decided to go with the industry leader in PC audio: yup,
Creative Labs - utilizing their new Audigy2 line of products to make
your gaming
experience that much more enjoyable. For overall case cooling,
Zalman is used to keeping that P4 running optimal not matter what stress
is put on it. Oh, and to me the most important part of gaming, the
video card. The machines on stag where both equipped with X850 ATI
monsters that performed beautifully for the crowd. Every detail was hand
picked or designed by Wendel to
create a superb gamer, he even had a special power supply and case to
make sure the PC would be ok with the extra RAID setup. I believe they also have a less expense line
of Fatality products utilizing a stripped down version of the motherboard
and a X700 ATI video card for the
folks that don't have the big bucks to sink into one of his monster
machines.

Well, enough about the rig, let's get back
to the booth. I stayed around for a bit and watched a few rounds
of playing action with Johnathan. During the time I was there, Wendel didn't even get fragged, not even once. And the setup was
awesome, two large flat screen LCD
TV's were suspended over the competitors so everyone saw exactly what
they did. The overall booth experience and quality products I had the
pleasure of seeing at this booth were top notch.
It was one of the highlights of my trip and I hope I can catch another
one of these in the near future.

If you would like more information on the Fatal1ty product line or their
next booth/contest check out
www.fatal1ty.com. Also I would like to thank Johnathan and the rest
of the folks at the exhibit for a very enjoyable time.